


the velvet rope

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [42]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Collegestuck, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Infidelity, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Rope Bondage, halfassed D/s, mentioned equiara, mentioned solfef
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:13:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2855417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your open relationship with him is usually fine, although the crush you have on another young woman complicates things slightly. After he decides, most likely out of shame, to lie to you, you realize you need a break. You start spending more time with the girl you like, and her own girlfriend. And you realize you don't have to always be the one in control. You don't have to hold everything down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the velvet rope

**Author's Note:**

> late junior year shenanigans

You have these tiny fits occasionally. Not full blown episodes, really. But minor tremors where you have to keep blinking to stop tears from falling. The act of trying to prevent them makes them worse, because you, Aradia Megido, you cannot stop shaking, your heart rate must be over 200, and you are going to die.

In Anatomy and Physiology II, you meet the girl who could explain them. Roxy Lalonde, the irreverent blonde thing who shows up to lecture when it suits her, usually in an advanced state of intoxication. She’s got torn black stockings, a blindingly pink scarf, blonde hair, and a perpetual grin.

And when you break down in an empty hallway after class, she crouches down beside your sitting form, and whispers to you.

_"Deep breaths, Aradia."_

She squeezes your hand.

_"Deep breaths. I’m here. You’re here."_

"But," you gasp. "I… I am going to die."

She gazes you with a mixture of empathy and pity.

_"You’re not."_

In a soothing voice, she starts reciting the bones in the human skeleton, slowly, from the skull down. By the time she reaches the scapula, you find that you can breathe normally. Later, over Starbucks at the union, she explains to you that she has panic disorder, along with other anxiety disorders.

"Which ones?" you ask, before you kick yourself for prying.

Her expression darkens and she immediately changes the subject to the upcoming exam.

At any rate, recitation of the bones and the periodic table is how Roxy brings herself back whenever she takes leave of reality.

You originally knew her as Sollux’s arch-rival from high school, the one who could have snatched the valedictorian’s medal from him if she hadn’t cut sophomore english so many times.

But she’s more than that.

Roxy, she knows answers. She’s willing to help, even if she has zero patience whatsoever. One of her passions is bioinformatics, one is chemical engineering, and the other one is old school video games. The last one is writing salacious fanfiction about wizards.

Sometimes, a few sails to the wind, she trips over her scarf on her way up the stairs and you have to help her up.

“We’re gonna pretend that never happened,” she jokes.

She sits in front of you in lecture. You memorize her mannerisms carefully while you should be focusing on the projector.

Your notes are abysmal, even if your grades are not.

In lab, when Roxy has problems fixing the zoom on the microscope, you put your hand atop hers on the fine focus, and help her adjust it until she smiles up at at you, thanking you for all your help. It only occurs to you then that you’ve been leaning forward against her the entire time. You pull black and blush. Roxy, typically infamous for her double-entendres, says nothing.

You’re glad for her silence.

This girl who won’t stop pacing the hallways of your mind. She’s attractive in this off-hand kind of way, thin and blonde, as if she could be a model if she wore anything besides turtlenecks, skirts, stockings, and bright pink scarves.

When you talk about archeology, she listens, asking about digs and your findings. She cares about what you have to say, asking all sorts of questions.  You know only one other person who does.

Sometimes, you run into her at Karkat’s suite, and she’s either playing video games with Sollux or drinking herself insensate with Eridan.

One night, you stay on the living room couch with her, having been sexiled from Sollux’s room due to shenanigans with Feferi. Roxy tells you that you’re really pretty and your hair smells like chai tea. You think about kissing her, but decide against it. It’s not that you’re strictly heterosexual, but even so.

She rises, a little unsteadily, to the stereo system, which has been blasting music for the suite’s occupants. But most of those occupants are either asleep or unconscious, so she switches the song.

And then from the stereo, woman’s voice, singing.

_“Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel….”_

She looks at you expectantly, and you’re unsure of what she’s planning until she extends her hand.

“Wanna dance?”

You take the proffered hand, allowing her to pull you off of the couch.

Roxy draws you close, so near that you smell not only the faint alcohol on her breath, but the perfume she must have put on before she left for Karkat’s. Nervous, your hands finally settle on her shoulders. Tall for a girl, she has maybe four or five inches on you, and is slimmer than you are. You would feel self-conscious around her but your self-consciousness died about two shots ago.

You slow dance around the living room, gliding on the hardwood floors. Your eyes never leave Roxy’s, and she seems perfectly content to lead.

_“Lovers walk along the shore, and leave their footprints in the sand… Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?”_

You hope nobody else in this suite wakes up.

 _“….half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?_ ”

In fact, you are going to add the skull of the first person to awaken to your skeleton collection.

_“When you knew that it was over, you were suddenly aware…”_

You are suddenly aware of Roxy’s hand moving up your body and nearly jump out of your skin.

_“That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of his hair….”_

She uses the aforementioned hand to cup your face.

The pair of you keep dancing until the conclusion of the song.

An hour later, Roxy passes out, but you, you are too keyed up to shut your eyes for long.  At the first hint of dawn, you stumble back to Irving and get ready for the Monday drag.

Every morning, your routine is the same. Shower, moisturize, dress, pin hijab into place, apply eyeliner, lipstick, and will the day to pass as quickly as possible until your Anatomy and Physiology II class, where you can stare at the back of Roxy Lalonde’s head and wonder if her lips taste like vodka.

The relationship between you and Sollux has been poly since the dawn of time, but… you’re scared of telling him. Scared that he’ll be angry at you for dating his ex-girlfriend and arch-rival. Scared. moreover, that she’ll say no, since she’s already dating Jade Harley, her current roommate.

There are so many negative resolutions, and only one positive. The statistics are against you.

So you blow an errant lock out hair of your face and return to your outline.

Roxy and Jade have a relationship a lot like your and Sollux’s. They’re not into PDA or other public embarrassments. A knowing look when they pass on campus is good enough. 

And it’s not that you don’t love Sollux, because that’s a total lie. From his busted brain, his lisp, and his brilliance, to his sense of humor and his mismatched sneakers, you adore this young man. Your feelings toward him are a universal constant.

Even so.

There’s something about Roxy that you can’t seem to shake.

Some nights, you sit in your bed praying until you can’t keep your eyes open, for the strength to get over this girl.

Spring term draws on, and as always, there’s something brewing on the horizon.

You sense it - the most recent storm of many - coming when Sollux stops sleeping. When he stays in his room for days at a time, coding what he promises will be a revolutionary program. And then, on the weekends, when he gravitates toward the sound and light of parties like a firefly on speed/

And you are pretty sure he is also on speed.

This “watch Sollux” thing has become a full time job for you. You make sure he doesn’t hurt himself. You try to talk him down from his psychotic delusions. You have accepted that this is part of loving him, learning to navigate the moments he isn’t in his right mind.

Roxy, who shares a major with him, is also on “prevent Sollux from doing anything stupid” duty.

And after all is said and done, he’s docile, full of risperdal, and apologetic. He never needs to apologize to you. You know he can’t control it.

Still, the sleepless nights worrying about him have taken their toll. Then there’s the rumor mill, which churns so incessantly that you have to ask him, so you can put the whole thing to rest once and for all.

 _AA: i have a questi0n_  
AA: that i need y0u to answer h0nestly  
AA: did y0u get int0 sexual stuff during y0ur last manic epis0de  
TA: of cour2e not, AA

But even before you asked, evidence to the contrary lay in your inbox.

 _TG: omfomg im sosorry_  
TG: slolux were like foolin around fter class nd stuff  
TG: but u kno hw theres hard limits and stuff  
TG: of course u do ur like bondage master  
TG: ssoso one of mine is handsin my apnts  
TG: lk this is wlel establioshjed  
AA: i am aware  
TG: nd after hetired to get hns hands in myskirt  
TG: he stopped bc he rmmbered tht was 2 far  
TG: andnd i ralized he wsnt in his right mid  
TG: h e was making no snesne  
TG: s i called u  
TG: aradi im so sorry  
TG: plase dont be angry a me  
AA: im n0t angry at y0u in the slightest r0xy  
AA: d0nt w0rry

Your relationship was always open, given his situation with Feferi and yours with Equius. It’s not the act that kills you as much as the deception does. 

You call Sollux’s bluff and show him the exchange you had with Roxy, and all he can do is apologize.

You’d wanted so badly to give him the benefit of the doubt, to believe that maybe he’d completely forgotten about his actions, but he’d known exactly what you were talking about.

He’d remembered, and lied to you out of either shame or guilt. You’re lucky that you have a single, so that when you start throwing things in your wall out of frustration, there’s no roommate to disturb. You want to cry, but instead of experiencing an overflow of emotion, you feel strangely empty.

In one of the science fiction shows you watched to have more in common with Sollux, there was something about a Prime Directive. And the prime directive of your relationship was as follows:  _we will not deceive each other._

 _AA: i wish y0u had t0ld me the truth_  
AA: because  
AA: i have tried to be h0nest with y0u always  
AA: and it hurts t0 receive fr0m y0u any less than that  
AA: and i am n0t going t0 break up with you because i d0 n0t think the situati0n warrants it  
AA: i l0ve y0u  
AA: but i need s0me time and space t0 think  
TA: ii under2tand

Your time and space to think begins with your wandering to and standing outside of train station in the pouring rain, letting the cold water seep into your clothes, into your bones. Then, Roxy drives up in her ancient death trap of a car, rolls down the window, and asks you if you need a ride.

“No,” you say. “I’m thinking.”

“Well, you can think inside, right?” she asks. “Come on, get in, I’ll be quiet and everything.”

A quiet Roxy is a snowy day in hell, but nonetheless, you accept her offer.

“Where’re you going?” Roxy asks.

“Nowhere, really.”

That’s how you end up at Gray, letting the Roxy make you a cup of tea while Jade sleeps on the opposite bed, using her biochemistry as a pillow, her braided hair in slight disarray.

“Wha—?” Jade asks, roused by the sudden noise in the room.

Roxy shushes her.

“S okay, it’s just Aradia,” she explains. “I’m making tea. Want some?”

"Some of my tea, no doubt," Jade grumbles.

Roxy shrugs. “Didn’t see your name on it.”

Jade’s content to sip at hibiscus tea, while you and Roxy spike your mugs with something stronger.

“What’s on your mind?” Roxy asks.

For a second, being this close to her makes you forget exactly what your issue is, but only for that instant.

“He had sex with someone else,” you say, voice flat.

Jade, now awake and studying again, whistles through her mismatched teeth. Roxy shrugs, still not seeing the big deal since your relationship is open.

You drain your glass of vodka spiked tea.

“Then, he denied it, at least until I showed him my proof. The conversation,” you continue.

A skill she probably perfected on Harris Field, where people smoked, drank, and talked shit on the regular, Roxy is seldom surprised by anything. But this makes her mouth drop open wide enough to catch flies. You exhale and shake your head, determined not to cry, because you will not let anything like this reduce you to tears.

“He  _lied_  to me.”

That’s when you - Aradia Megido, always reserved, always composed  - finally lose it. You cry for this, you cry for the unrequited, you cry for always having to look after Sollux, you cry for the depression you only beat last semester, you cry for school, you cry for your student loans, you cry for always having to maintain this dignified air, of having to always smile, you cry until you’re absolutely devoid of tears.

Roxy holds your hand while you shake, and Jade, Jade kicks aside her book and envelops you both in a hug.

“Just let it all out,” Jade says.

“Word, yeah,” Roxy adds. “You’re not a robot.”

You try to find an excuse to leave, since you dislike being the third wheel amongst couples more than anything, but Jade and Roxy are oddly tolerable.

Yes, they hold hands and exchange significant looks. But they never make you feel left out. You and Jade talk about the skeletal system while Roxy feigns interest and plays 2048 on her phone. When Roxy bitches about Sollux and his philandering bum tendencies, you chide her and try not to laugh.

Roxy makes dinner at around nine, some kind of chicken cutlet dish, with the three of you still lost in conversation.

That night, you three sleep in Jade’s bed, a tight fit, but somehow soothing for its warmth. Proximity. Knowing you’re not alone. Roxy’s got one arm hanging off the edge of the bed and the other around your waist. Jade is body’s flush against yours, the tendrils of some of her braids thrown forward into your face.

Your clothes are still strewn over Roxy’s radiator. The bobby pins for your hijab lay on Jade’s desk. It’s almost like you live here, even if you are an interloper.

Jade rises first in the morning - at the time somewhere between unholy what the fuck and the asscrack of dawn - since she works in a hospital. Clad in her scrubs, wearing her ID, she hugs you goodbye before leaving.

You get ready next, bound back for your dorm and your clothes, but awaken Roxy before you leave.

“Love ya, Jade,” she slurs sleepily in response. Then, she gets a better look for you. “Oh, Aradia!”

“That’s me.”

“Okay,” she murmurs. “I love you too.”

Then she passes out again.

You forgive Sollux slowly, forgive him because he does seem contrite, but slowly because… you are still angry. This is the longest time you’ve gone without speaking to him since seventh grade, and you’re the one who finally breaks the silence.

“Don’t forget to take your meds,” you text him one afternoon.

He’s slightly annoyed that you’re still his lithium alarm, but more relieved that you’re talking to him again.

“I missed you,” he confesses.

“Me too.”

Talking to him after that spell of silence reminds you of performing the steps to a dance you’ve known all your life. Everything comes back, though not quite the same as it used to be,

There’s a distance, and you don’t particularly mind it. Everything needs a period of rest. Maybe in June, you’ll be ready to pick up where you left off. But not yet.

The way you’ve seen it, everyone starts out as one. Sometimes, when one meets the right person, they become two. Things tend to stop then, at two.

Two roommates living in a dorm room, and the girl who spends five nights a week with them.

The girl with the dark skin and darker hair falls asleep in your arms. She falls asleep pretty much everywhere.

When the girl with the light hair has night terrors, you sing to her until she stops crying. 

You’ve been part of a trio before, but that didn’t work out. Older now, perhaps you can make this work.

One is a beginning. Two is natural. Three is precarious

You wake up between these two young women on so many mornings that Roxy jokes that you should move in. There’s a shelf in the left closet of C103 that nobody uses, so you decide to put the skull of a small mammal there. Jade smiles, green eyes bright, watching as you start leaving small pieces of yourself behind. The scarlet hoodie hung over Roxy’s chair. The medications in a dresser drawer. The eyeliner and lipstick, both red, in the bathroom cabinet.

Your nylon rope in her closet, like a promise. From the look she gives you, it’s clear she’s no stranger to it.

"You know what this is for?" you ask.

"Definitely," Jade replies.

Sometimes Jade puts her textbook down and kisses you when you least expect it. With tired eyes, she talks to you about physics while she organizes the mini-fridge. Sometimes she falls asleep halfway through, curled up on the carpet. You put a blanket over her and close the refrigerator door.

Roxy studies for all her sciences like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. She still finds time to kiss you, to touch you, to let you return the favor. The gesture makes your heart ache.

And you, you have a room in another building, one you only enter when you’ve run out clothes at their place. Your old room reminds you of Sollux. And you and he talk, but it’s different. Everything’s different.

One day, you two were eleven and digging holes, and suddenly, you wake up, you’re twenty-one, and it’s difficult to recognize the face of your best friend.

Your shadow. Your other half. Your gaze lingers after him long after he’s walked away, bound for the nearest computer lab.

One night, you even follow him back to his suite, arm in arm, like old times.

Kissing him is bittersweet, like memory. Touching him is knowing that you must love him for his volatility along with his thoughtfulness. Sometimes you feel as if you’ve been divided into three. A piece for everyone you’ve ever loved, although you’re nearly sure you’d need more pieces.

You miss him, flaws and all, but there’s a difference between loving someone and knowing that they may not be healthy for you at the moment.

Your trio may be odd, but Jade and Roxy coax you into taking as well as giving. You feel no shame for displaying weakness around them. Allowing someone to care for you without feeling guilt is strange, but not an unwelcome sensation.

Roxy gets an idea for what to do with your red nylon rope when you two discuss kinks and you talk about how you’re both decent at shibari.

“You want me to tie you up?” you ask. This is perfectly normal conversation in a room shared by Roxy and Jade. Jade’s verdant eyes flash with faint interest.

“Nah,” Roxy says, not looking up from her assignment. “I wanna tie you up, y’know, if that’s a thing you want.”

“I….” you’re a little speechless. “I’ve never been on the receiving end of that.”

Roxy shrugs. “It’s okay. Forget I asked, then.”

You’re nervous, but you keep your voice fairly steady.

“What I mean is that I, I’ve never done it. But I want to try.”

You want to know how a scene operates from the other side.

With Sollux and Equius, you were the domme. Sollux with his desire to be immobilized, and Equius with his desire to obey. You were the knot-tying, order-giving, punishment-providing leader of their scenes. Always keeping an eye on the frequency and depth of their breathing, and an ear for the minor changes in the inflections of their vocalizations.

The thing with stubborn young men is that they tend to not call the safeword even when they should. So it was always up to you, reading body language alone, to ascertain when they’d had enough.

For once, you want to be immobilized.

“Are you sure?” Roxy asks a final time.

“Positive.”

And you want to cede the responsibility to another. You want to lose control.

From a shoebox under her bed, Roxy extricates two dental dams, a condom, lube, a blindfold, medical scissors, and a ball gag. Jade snatches up the scissors and examines them, quirking an eyebrow at them.

"You ass, I’ve been looking for those!" she says.

Roxy tries and fails to look apologetic. “Yeah, well.”

On second thought, she puts the gag away and asks Jade to go outside to refill her water bottle. Aside from the bottle, Jade pulls clothing and a bathrobe out of her drawer. When she returns, water bottle full, the gray bathrobe conceals what she might be wearing underneath.

"Tell me you’re wearing the red one," Roxy grins at her. You’re puzzled.  _The red what?_

"Not tonight."

Jade watches while you two work out hard limits and safewords. Red for stop, yellow for slow down. Roxy says she’s going to check on you every so often anyway.

“Don’t let Jade fool you, her mind’s just as filthy as mine,” Roxy laughs. Jade rolls her eyes and shrugs her robe off, revealing a sheer nightie the color of her eyes. Her bra and panties, however, are black.

She sits back down on her bed. At your mixture of shock and amusement, she gives you a “well, you asked for it” look.

She closes her book, removes her glasses, and walks over to sit with you and Roxy, looking faintly pleased with herself.

Trepidation tingles from your head to your toes, settling somewhere below the pit of your stomach.

Unlike other people you know, you enjoy the sensation of being blindfolded. It forces you to focus on your breathing, to keep it deep, even and steady. So when Roxy says she’s going to affix a sash to your eyes while she ties you up, you do not object in the slightest.

“Careful not to cut off her circulation,” Jade warns as Roxy starts to wind the rope around your wrists. She makes a little “tch” noise of annoyance.

“I’ve been doing this to you for years, Jade, I think I got it,” she replies.

You expect more after she’s finished with your wrists, but she stops there, seemingly satisfied with her handiwork thus far.

“Okay, Aradia?” she asks, undoing the blindfold.

“Fine.”

Jade straddles you, the gauzy verdant fabric of her negligee grazing your blouse, her braids grazing your face. 

After snapping the first button of your blouse with her thumb, Jade nibbles a fusillade of bruises from your jawline to your clavicle. Hoist by your own petard, wrists tied to the bed posts by your own rope, you lean forward, toward the sensation.

She gives an innocent little giggle at that, sounding more like a ninth grader in a school uniform than a college junior wearing nothing but lingerie.

Undoing the rest of your blouse is a breeze. Undoing your bra proves to be a patent impossibility with your wrists tied.

“Can I cut this?” Jade asks.

“Uh-huh.”

Using the scissors, Jade makes a straight cut through the center-front of your bra with an anti-climactic pop. When Roxy taps her on the thigh, she moves over, her back against the wall, no longer straddling you.

Blonde hair falling into her face, Roxy kisses a straight trail down your torso, down the dip of your stomach, only stopping at the fabric of your underwear.

She snaps the waistband against your skin, eyes already focused lower.

"Aradia?" she asks, almost reverent. "Is this okay?"

You nod and smile. “I’m fine.”

Although you haven’t consumed a drop of alcohol, you feel slightly drunk, clear but hazy, while she teases you, skitting her fingertips down the growing wet spot covered by your navy blue panties.

Each time she touches you, you hope it’s a prelude to something more, but then she dances her fingers away and you bite down on your lip to keep from crying out.

Jade and her tongue pay special attention to the underside of your breasts, occasionally drifting up to graze a nipple. You are not accustomed to so much attention at the same time, and it’s all overload and totality.

Roxy gazes at you, expecting something.

You look at her pleadingly and strain at your ties, this time in earnest, to get closer to her.

“Please, Roxy.”

You’re hyperventilating. Roxy draws little circles on your upper thigh with her fingers, but little else. Jade runs a soothing hand down your abdomen.

“Please, what?” Roxy asks, the circles becoming even fainter.

“Please, mistress,” you beg.

That’s when she smiles again.

“With an appeal like that, how could I not?”

Roxy stretches over you and pulls a dental dam off the surface of her desk.

She attempts to tug, then yank, down your underwear, and you lift your hips to assist her efforts. Something in the fabric rips, and you could really give less of a flying fuck whatever it is at the moment.

Because if she doesn’t touch you, you’re going to die.

Roxy gazes at the place your thighs meet, breathing warm air against you, making you squirm in your bonds, and carefully placing the barrier.

Jade’s switched from whispering reassuring things into your ear to whispering suggestive ones, the fabric of her underwear rustling as her hand moves beneath it. With her other hand, Jade uses her index finger to trace a lazy pattern around one of your nipples.

_As long as everyone’s enjoying themselves._

Over the semesters, you’ve learned to keep the sex noises to a minimum so as not to arouse the suspicion of the other people on your floor, or to get noise complaints from the RA.

But the moment Roxy’s tongue finally touches you without pretense, Jade kisses you demandingly, rolling one of your nipples in between her fingertips,

You’re not sure which sensory input to focus on. You never are. You’re floating.  

And Roxy, oh Roxy, she’s got a knack of dragging others into her rule breaking. When she swipes her tongue around your clit, at first gently, but then forcefully, you let out a long, unmistakable moan.

If you had a free hand, you’d push it against the back of her head, to urge her to keep going.

Jade’s sweat has stuck tendrils of dark hair to her forehead. She stops attacking your mouth and inches across, to nibble on your earlobe, whispering all sorts of filthy things into your ear, telling you precisely what she could do to you with her strap on.

You turn a bit so you can face her, somewhat uncomfortable given the way the ropes holding your wrists are tied, and with Roxy’s head buried between your legs. However, staring Jade straight in the eye, you give her your best devious grin.

“Try me, darling,” you manage, panting.

The twinkle in her eye tells you that she definitely will at some point. You imagine Jade, Jade Harley with her perpetual eagerness, harnessed into a strap on.

She’d kill you, and you’d enjoy every second of it.

You’d reach your final judgment and even St. Peter would be like,  _“Damn, Megido, you were one lucky motherfucker.”_

The thought of Jade using her strap on with you brings you closer to the edge than you’d like to admit, and your thighs begin to quiver.

That’s when Roxy decides to pull away.

You nearly whine at the loss of sensation, but you’re no stranger to edging. It is your favorite thing to do to Sollux.

At any rate, Roxy has her attention focused on Jade. Jade, with the hand down her panties. Jade, with her eyes half open and her breath coming in halting, erratic exhales.

Suddenly, you have an idea.

“C’mere, Jade,” you tell her, and she obliges gladly, kneeling to straddle you.

You start out kissing her chastely, and then with more vigor, your tongues exploring each other’s mouths. The rhythm in Jade’s occupied hand quickens.

Gently, you move to her jawline, and to her neck. At first, your open-mouthed kisses are gentle, more tongue than anything. Then you start sucking hard enough to leave actual marks, and she bucks forward, gazing at you with open-mouthed wonder, her hand shuddering.

“Aradia,” she gasps. “Do that again.”

“Forgot to tell you,” Roxy smiles. “Her neck’s really sensitive.”

_Yeah, well, no shit._

With a vague rhythm, you alternate between gentle and bruising on Jade’s neck, eliciting sounds that seem to be half breath and half whine.

Roxy watches the two of you, pupils blown with arousal, but elects not to touch herself. Sweat-slick blonde hair plastered to her face, her gaze darts back and forth, as if she can’t figure out which of you to focus on.

“You two are hella cute, you know that?” she asks.

While you laugh at that statement, Jade’s too unraveled to register it, eyes completely glazed over.

Her muscles tense suddenly.

“Ara, I—”

But you already know.

“It’s fine,” you tell her, painting a final swath down the side of her neck with your tongue. “Don’t worry about it.”

Jade’s eyes go wide. For a second or two, she convulses in place, breath coming in sharp, piercing exhales.

And then she’s limp as a rag doll, mouth opened fish wide as she tries to catch her breath.

Roxy grabs the water bottle and passes it to her girlfriend. “Drink this, Jay, c’mon, before you pass out or something.”

Jade nods dumbly and does what she’s told.

When she’s a little more aware, she climbs over you and Roxy and gets off the bed. She puts on a bathrobe and grabs a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo, and a towel.

“I need a shower,” she mutters, opening the door half an inch so she can peek outside and ensure the hallway is empty before she does the two yard sprint of shame to the bathroom.

“Don’t fall asleep!” Roxy warns.

It takes Roxy a few seconds to realize you’re still tied to the bed, and when she does, she’s more than a little alarmed.

“Oh, shit, fuck, are you okay, Aradia?”

“I’m tied to your bedposts, and I’ve got the worst case of blue balls in the entire universe,” you respond. “So I’d be even more okay if you’d continue what you started.”

Instead, Roxy uncaps Jade’s water bottle, and drips about a third of the bottle into your mouth. She checks your hands and wrists for loss of circulation, and then nods, satisfied.

“So where were we?” she asks.

“Somewhere between you going down on me and you going down on me.”

You truly give the most useful responses. But instead of laughing, she glares, eyes flashing.

“I don’t like that sort of back talk from my subordinates,” she growls.

_Well, damn._

You try your best to look obsequious and only succeed in looking constipated. Then, you think of Equius for inspiration, and that makes the exercise a lot easier.

“I apologize for my impertinence, mistress,” you offer.

You and Roxy are both terrible at this verbal D/s bullshit. You give it two minutes before one of you breaks character and bursts out laughing. Roxy rips open another dental dam and places it, the latex feeling so cold against you that you shudder back instinctively. They must deep freeze these or something.

The feel of her breath on you warms you right back up.

You could live a thousand years and never grow bored by the feel of her tongue, the way she swirls, drags, and concentrates it in one spot until you feel you toes curling involuntarily. She glances up to ask you something.

“How many fingers?”

It takes you a second to parse the question.

“Uh, two or three, I guess.”

But her fingers are not yours because you know your fingers and what they’re going to do, while she could do anything, and knowing Roxy and her penchant for teasing and edging, anything is not out of the question.

And oh shit, she’s lowered her head again.

She eases two slow tentative fingers into you, tongue still swiping a pattern around your clit, and you grind down against them, trying for anything. She seems to get the message, because the rhythm of her hand speeds up toward some kind of tangled output, a combination of pain and ecstasy.

You break your “no sound” rule a second time when she finds your g-spot.

She pushes herself up so she can grin at you eye-to-eye, and kisses you as if she’ll run out of air otherwise, the in-out rhythm of her fingers merciless. When she adds a third finger, you arch up toward her as far as you can without pulling any muscles.

_Relentless, relentless._

Your face feels wet with what you’re pretty sure are tears, and you hate that you can’t turn away and bury your face in the pillow. Roxy takes notice and kisses each of your eyelids in turn.

“Holy fuck,” you tell her, and you’re graying out. Not coming, but flying.

Tenderness flickers in her eyes, but her hand never slows. With her free hand, she wipes your face. You wish you could move your hands. You wish you could repay her, this sex-mussed, half-lidded, tousle-haired young woman who can

_open new doors_

_explain what it is_

_to fly without feeling_

_to be high without substance_

_to perceive with new perspective_

_eyes darting to the nylon bonds_

_to Roxy’s mouth_

_everything in stasis_

_a world pared down to you and she_

_here where the world is quiet_

_you…._

You….

You shake silently as you come, bedposts creaking as you pull at the nylon ropes, fuckdrunk and slightly out of phase. Awareness returns slowly, with the nonsense Roxy talks beginning to resolve into a coherent whole.

“…seem out of it,” is the first thing you understand.

That isn’t true, because you were in it for the first time in your life. And now, you’re back here again, feeling slightly apart.

“What’s the date?” she asks you.

“April. April 29th,” you figure out after a great deal of thought.

Roxy nods.

She picks the water bottle back up, waits for your aftershocks to abate, and then drips the remainder into your mouth, murmuring words of reassurance all the while.

Gently, she starts untying your ropes, kneading the once bound flesh, the cadence of her voice a strange but welcome constant. You could listen to it all day. First the left wrist, then she massages your hand. After that, the right.

It’s odd being able to move again. It’s odd being here again. You’re still not all there, continuing to phase in and out of subspace.

Jade must have finished showering in the interim, because she looks at you both from her bed, review book open, trying not to smile.

“And I thought _I_  looked completely dead after,” she comments, turning a page. Her glasses are back on, her hair is combed, her clothes are on again, and she looks like the pinnacle of a studious undergrad.

“You should probably shower with Aradia in case she passes out,” Jade warns.

Roxy nods. “Noted.”

You make to protest this concern until you try to get off the bed and nearly tip over.

So after a little bitching and moaning, you end up sharing a stall with Roxy, which makes you feel mildly self conscious. The only person you’ve ever showered with is Sollux.

Roxy shampoos and rinses the sweat out of your long hair, checking in with you whenever you seem to space out. You recognize the concern, but are far more accustomed to giving it than receiving it.

“That happens, when you sub for the first time,” she tells you, as she lathers up her own hair.

You’re at least somewhat in your present mind now.

“You would know?” you ask, wiping a lock of wet hair out of your eyes.

“Well, Jade is the one with the strap on.”

You laugh at that one.

“Did you like it?” Roxy asks.

A little nonverbal again, you nod emphatically and lean against the shower wall. In the tiny cubicle, the water cascades down the pair of you, rinsing away the remnants of the evening.

By the time you’re both clean, you’re so tired that Roxy has to half carry you back to her room. Once you and Jade are in her bed, you immediately start falling asleep while Jade reads, and Roxy smiles at you idiotically.

Roxy spends the night washing her sheets on the highest possible setting. In the morning, all three of you snore silently, crammed like sardines onto Jade’s bed.


End file.
